Cabinet skin and flesh

The Prime Minister is unlikely to take this columnist's recommendation to trim the Cabinet down to 10 ministers, including him, plus two parliamentary secretaries as part of a succession policy signal to non-performing ministers. It is his privilege to ignore unsolicited advice. What he cannot ignore is the fact that circumstances have connived against him when it comes to give shape to key parts of his and nation's executive engine-room.

The public has heard it from John Dalli himself that, once he had decided not to remain at finance, he was reluctant to accept a position in Lawrence Gonzi's first Cabinet. When Mr Dalli did accept the foreign portfolio, Malta Enterprise was included within it. Now that he has left the Cabinet, Malta Enterprise has also left the foreign minister's watch. It has gone to the minister who was already in charge of public investments and information technology.

The PM added Malta Enterprise to that, without, as may have been expected, shifting elsewhere the responsibility for information technology so as not to allow the ministry to become a new super sprawl. The relocation of the important investment promotion vehicle after his departure suggests Malta Enterprise was given to Mr Dalli for some consideration other than the obvious one - that it made sense to mobilise to the full the resources at the foreign ministry to promote Malta as a destination for direct investment.

Within the space of 100 days, Malta Enterprise, itself passing through the throes of a great deal of internal chopping and changing, found itself passed on like a baby. Is it a much awaited or an unwanted baby? Whatever the political answer to that, Malta Enterprise is a very important baby that has to be nurtured to grow into Malta's main champion in the do-or-die investments list.

In Minister Austin Gatt it has another forceful political head. He is not a technocrat, like Mr Dalli, but he is picking up technocratic qualities to add to the administrative and strategic skills he had developed and honed in the direct political structure of his party. What will have to be seen is whether Malta Enterprise will now, at last, become a real ship of enterprise, with a set course that takes into account the fact that the seas its must sail in will never be smooth.

Though it has been hived off from the foreign ministry, the ministry and its chanceries can never be divorced from and aloof to steadfastly promoting inward direct investment. One could anticipate that the Foreign Minister's time will be taken up with rigours of EU membership, not to mention deploying diplomatic skills with the non-EU world, especially since, unlike his predecessor, he does not have a parliamentary secretary to assist him.

From that it could follow that the human and logistic resources of the foreign ministry will also be absorbed by those roles which are key to it. Were that to happen, it would be a great mistake. Diplomatic and political travel and organisation will indeed gobble up much time and resources, not least if there is too much standing on ceremony. The fact that the Prime Minister too will have to travel and engage abroad more than his predecessors will also strain foreign ministry personnel.

But it will prove to be a very grave error if the ministry does not also have the role, and the resources for it, to collaborate with Malta Enterprise and be as close to it as skin is to flesh. To proclaim that such collaboration is "obviously" intended will be far from enough. Results count, not declarations of intent. To get results, the relationship between Foreign Minister Michael Frendo and Minister Gatt will have to be closer than with any other of their colleagues.

If that becomes the case, the portfolio location of Malta Enterprise will be as secondary an issue as rumours that Deputy PM Tonio Borg coveted the foreign ministry when Mr Dalli vacated it. It also remains to be seen how the coordinating ministerial committees announced by Dr Gonzi when he became Premier will function. Have they begun operating? One does not expect them to report publicly on all the details of their activities. But it would be heartening to know that they are, indeed, active, and not mere expressions of good intent.

An optimally-shaped Cabinet, consisting of able ministers possessing the ability to work with each other as a team, will not guarantee anything. Such a set-up, in the jargon of economics, is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Cabinets can never fully satisfy the "necessary" part. The extent to which they do creates the ability to get down to the coordinated job required of those who hold ministerial portfolios for such time as the Prime Minister lets them do it.

He is their taskmaster. His, needless to say, is the electorate, which always demands clearly visible real results.